It’s been a cold, rainy spring day in DC today, but just a few weeks ago we had this. Isn’t spring great?
Speaking of Sivers, his book on How to Live is my go-to gift for people who read. A step-up from that — and it is a yuuuge step — is Nassim Taleb’s Incerto, but I have to know someone really well because a five-book set is a bit of an obligation.
And speaking of Taleb, it looks like we were in the same building yesterday. Small world.
There is a phrase in Serbian when someone is bamboozling you that they are “trying to sell you a horn for a candle”. I have no idea how it came about, but here are some researchers trying to sell us social media for the internet and the phrase came to mind. (ᔥTyler Cowen)
🏀 With the Nuggets and the Knicks both knocked out of the playoffs on the same day, my basketball-watching season is officially over. Let’s see what 2024/25 brings to everyone, the Wizards in particular.
That’s it! I tend not to abandon books half-way through, but I just couldn’t swallow these three.
Should I revisit? Emerson had some good quotes, apparently, and Campbell (seems to have) inspired many good stories although his own did not persuade me.
But Catch-22, dear oh dear. You could not pay me to start reading that piece of work again.
Inspired by Derek Sivers, I now have a Now page. Thank you, Derek.
🍿 The Shining (1980) came out many decades ago, but from the opening I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-a-drone bird’s eye views through the masterful tracking shots of the Overlook Hotel to the anxiety-inducing stills of Jack Nicholson and his eyebrows it beats any and all of the modern-day perfectly-shot too-slick-to-be-real CGI trickery. I have been rewatching the movie several times over several decades and the cinematography is getting comparably better and better — quite damning for Hollywood.
This time around, however, I could better appreciate what’s truly scary about the movie: not the blood-filled hallway, or the hag soaking in that bathtub, or even the haunted twins*, but rather the ease with which a middle-aged man becomes bitter and starts blaming his family for holding him back. Not everyone is capable of extinguishing a star.
It’s been a cold, rainy spring day in DC today, but just a few weeks ago we had this. Isn’t spring great?
I wanted so very much to like morgen for its calendar helper services like automatic travel time, prep time, flexible meetings, etc. But then it throws this alert window with no explanation whatsoever for why on Earth it would need to access my microphone and nope, no way, hard pass.
The Beatles wanted to do a LotR movie, starring:
McCartney as Frodo, Starr as Sam, Lennon as Gollum and Harrison as Gandalf. The Beatles’ choice of director? Stanley Kubrick, fresh from making 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But Tolkien didn’t like the idea of a pop group being associated with his books. I am not sure about that cast either, but just imagine Kubrick’s Lord of the Rings. In the style of Barry Lyndon, perhaps? (ᔥMarginal Revolution)
Some of the books I’ve added to the pile since January:
And more! How many days in a year again?